#98: Seneca's Letters: 51-60
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[tentative] For March, we will pick up our occasional reading of Seneca's Letters, reading 51-60.
Seneca (also known as Seneca the Younger) (4 BC - AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher living in the first century AD. He was also a dramatist as well as tutor and then advisor to Nero. Among his writings was a collection of 124 letters crafted as a single work ostensibly to his friend Lucilius. It is sometimes called "Moral Letters to Lucilius", the "Moral Epistles", or "Letters from a Stoic".
There are several translations available, and you can read whichever you like.. Unfortunately, most
of them are incomplete, and don't have the full set of 31-60. Two suggested translations are:
- "Letters on Ethics" by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, translated with an introduction and commentary by Margaret Graver and A. A. Long (University of Chicago Press, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo20612233.html). It's a very good translation, and I recommend it. Some might think it's a bit pricey, and there are not many copies in the Minuteman Library network.
- An older translation is by Richard Gummere for the Loeb series from Harvard, published in 1917. It is easily available in print and online. One site is https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius.
Of course, you can mix and match your readings from different translations if you prefer. A very good
translation, for example, is by Elaine Fantham, "Seneca: Selected Letters", but it's not complete in our range.